News: Steam Now Selling Text Only IF

A series of ChoiceScript games called the Heroes Rise are now available for purchase on Steam. These games mark the first all-text based interactive fiction on Steam, and are created by Choice of Games.

Choice of Games is a text-based gaming company based out of California, responsible for games like Choice of the Dragon and Choice of Broadsides.They are also the developers behind ChoiceScript, the text-adventure script for Heroes Rise. Previous Choice of Games projects have been featured in the Google Play store and iOS App Store.

The Hero Project is the brainchild of television writer Zachary Sergi, and is set in a world where super-powered heroes are celebrities. You play a character, who’s gender and sexual orientation you can control alongside their in-game allegiances, on a powered hero television show. Two games from the Heroes Rise series are purchasable on Steam — Hero Project and Prodigy. You can buy them individually for $2.99 a piece, or in a Heroes Rise bundle for $3.99 until June 30th.

This is not the first instance of an interactive fiction game being available on Steam, with examples as varied as Christine Love’s Analogue a Hate Story to Will O’Neill’s Actual Sunlight. Zoe Quinn’s Twine game Depression Quest was even Greenlit in January. However, what sets Heroes Rise apart is that it is entirely text-based. There are no audio cues or images to help along the way, and it’s a definite throw back in that regard to traditional IF.

The game is available now on Steam, with a playable demo that will allow you to play the first 5 chapters.